Yes, You Can Shoot for the Moon With Yemi A.D.

Featuring Yemi A.D., Artist, CEO, Serial Entrepreneur of Moonshot Platform Inc.

English Sall: [00:00:01] I'm English Sall. Welcome to System Catalyst, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place. Ever stopped and wondered, am I really making a difference? It's one of those big questions that sneaks up on us from time to time. Not to get too existential here, but if you want to become a system catalyst, it's something that you should be asking yourself. Today's guest, Yemi A.D., is here to offer some guidance. After working in the arts, entertainment and advertising industries. He now runs Moonshot, an accelerator for young changemakers having grown up in the Soviet Union. Yemi later achieved success that was once unimaginable. His secret being authentic, forging effective collaborations and dreaming big. So today, Yemi will be sharing some of that wisdom with us. One of his crazy dreams was to go to the moon and guess what? He will. More on that later. All right, let's get into it. Here's my interview with Yemi. I'm so excited to talk to you. How are you doing? How's everything? [00:01:27][86.2]

Yemi A.D.: [00:01:28] Yeah, everything is is. Well. I am slowly preparing for my next stretch of a tour. I came back three days ago and I'm leaving again on Wednesday, so I'm very happy to be home. We just, like relaxing here. And I went to spa on the weekend. I had a beautiful dinner with my friends in the city, so. So I'm like soaking in. [00:01:54][25.3]

English Sall: [00:01:54] Nice. That's awesome. So where are you off to on Wednesday? [00:01:57][2.7]

Yemi A.D.: [00:01:58] I'm going to Boston, and then I'm coming back and then flying on Monday to L.A., then Santa Barbara, then Isola and Big Sur in San Francisco, then Ireland, Dublin, then Prague, and then New York again. [00:02:13][14.3]

English Sall: [00:02:13] Oh my gosh. So you've got a whirlwind tour coming up. So yeah, me, as someone who travels quite a bit. Do you have like a packing routine or do you have like essentials that you have to take with you? Like what's your what's your secret? Do you have, like some face serum that we should all be buying? [00:02:30][16.5]

Yemi A.D.: [00:02:31] You can see my taking routine. That would be something in between. An explosion of an atom bomb and improv blends in between the pieces of my clothes. But sometimes. Sometimes when I get back, I have to leave again so soon that I just leave some stuff in my suitcases and I bring them out. I leave them in. So it's been really kind of crazy. One and a half a year since the announcement of the space mission. So. So I've been traveling much, much more than before. But honestly, I think that the best skin product is a good food, a good sleep, and a good note. I think those would be the things that I would suggest for everyone to pack on going somewhere. [00:03:17][46.8]

English Sall: [00:03:20] As you can probably tell, Yemi keeps busy. He works on many creative and tech projects and runs his organization, Moonshot, an accelerator for the new generation of changemakers. [00:03:32][11.3]

Yemi A.D.: [00:03:34] We support young people who are doing social innovations in every way possible. How we measure it. We measure it through eggs. The Sustainable Development Goals, which is a metric that's used across the world. And how we do it, is we created two programs. One is Moonshot Awards, which is our solution crowdsourcing mechanism, where we we announce these awards. We give about $100,000 to different people who come forward and show us that their social innovation is really changing lives or changing environment, and that it needs help, that it needs boost to accelerate, to scale up, to be transferred to different places. Because sometimes people are solving problems that are problems in so many other places, and the solution doesn't get the right distribution. And then when they win it, we take about 30 to 100 of the best, one of the most promising ones, and we bring them to acceleration camp. It's called Moonshot Camp. And in this Moonshot Camp, I bring and our team bring probably the best mentors you can ever meet, like people who have exited multibillion dollar companies. Professors from Harvard, Yale, Oxford. Leaders of NGOs, but also examples of the young innovators who have made it, who has made and scaled up their innovation. So they could also kind of these young people that we bring, they can identify. So we really care about inclusion and diversity. And I don't mean I don't want to say these words because I know this is such a buzzword out there, but we take this differently. For us, it's not a spreadsheet that we fill in as an artist. Coming from environment of culture. We really look at diversity of people, not because of how they look, but because of what their life experience is and what their kind of mind perspective is. That's the most important thing for us, and I think that is the magic mixture when you have them in the room. And just to give you an example, for example, one of the winners of moonshot Idea board was, Matthias Bartek, who developed a translator for sign language. So you have it in your phone. Somebody is signing who point your camera at someone and you read the text, and he he offered it as an open source. And so, so anybody could use it. And it became the most precise and the fastest translator in the world. So we take this person and if we see that they are groundbreaking or we see that what they do is definitely worth attention, we expedite their journey from that place right to the right table to the table. When they are, there are decision makers that can fund you that can help you carved the language around you, campaigns that can introduce you to new customers, to partnerships. And I think that is what actually can accelerate partnerships is what can accelerate the sustainable development goals, and that can bring much more inclusion and much more just a healthy advancement into the society. [00:06:42][187.6]

English Sall: [00:06:43] That's amazing. One of the things that strikes me so much, hearing you speak about these amazing entrepreneurs and these amazing ideas, as you know, with this podcast, one of the things that Jeff and I are really trying to do is elevate and highlight the stories of system catalysts. And the reason, obviously, that we wanted you to come on here and talk to us is because the system in my mind that you really are not only trying to cultivate, but shape is really that of collaboration. And it's that of this sort of locally driven, network supported model that we speak about a lot of sort of saying, hey, what are the spaces in which we can bring in really amazing people with really great ideas to then be able to collaborate and go further together? As I'm hearing you and as I'm listening to your talk, I just hear the passion and excitement in your voice that you have for the change that these various individuals can bring about, both individually, but as well as, you know, when they're all sitting at the table together and when they're all in collaboration and conversation together. [00:07:52][69.1]

Yemi A.D.: [00:07:53] Thank you. Thank you I appreciate you. [00:07:55][1.5]

English Sall: [00:07:55] So yeah, me back to something that you also just actually said in this conversation around kind of the the moon mission and, you know, full disclosure, you are the first guest that we've ever had on the podcast that I think is actually on a mission training to go to the moon. Can you tell me about how this happened? Can you tell me about what inspired you to apply to dearMoon and sort of how this all kind of came about? [00:08:23][27.8]

Yemi A.D.: [00:08:24] So it was one of these, like, dates when I was back home in Prague, and I was just working on an event I had like an event agency and creative studio and talent agency, and I started many different things like ventures around entertainment industry and art. And my friend Peter, who is a great cinematographer, and we worked together. He came and he showed me this article and the video and he was like, hey, you know what? You're you're doing these things here in public for so long and, and you're always stressed about about these different campaigns, and your clients are stressing you. You should just go to the moon. And he showed me he showed me this article and the video and I couldn't get it out of my head. I was thinking about it for a month, and I was kind of encouraged to to believe that, you know, it's even possible for me to to sign up and to and to make it in this time. It was a very special time for me because I also applied for scholarships to Aspen Institute 100 fellowship. [00:09:27][63.2]

English Sall: [00:09:30] The Henry Crown Fellowship Yemi just referred to is a two year program by the Aspen Institute. It's all about bringing together business leaders who want to do more than just climb the corporate ladder. They also want to make a positive impact. [00:09:44][13.4]

Yemi A.D.: [00:09:45] After I worked in the entertainment industry, I've achieved, like, probably everything, that I kind of dreamt of. You know, working with Kanye West, working with Virgil Abloh, doing these big shows like VMAs and suddenly Nightlife and Coachella and doing different tours, choreographing and directing live shows. And then I still didn't feel like this is not my final destination. It's not my home. It's not like it's not where I want to spend the rest of my life. So when I retrieved and went like, okay, what's the next thing? Because I love to kind of reinvent myself every, every two, three years because I think it's very healthy and I just love to start from the beginning and just keep my feet on the ground while dreaming big. And this was probably one of the hardest moments for for reinvention, because before when I was moving from different industries like dance and choreography and theater and advertising agency and founding different businesses, it was not that hard because I could always kind of feel my gut. But when I stopped working with Kanye and, and did this like big, like Hollywood productions and so on, I felt it. I had to take a couple of years to really find and find myself in this inflection point. I found Aspen Institute and I found, okay, this is a great program. And like they so I so I went and I it took a couple of years for me, for me to get there because it's very competitive. It's it's not easy to get in. And I finally did. So this moment I was in this class. And then I saw this article and I had these classmates, which are fellow fellows who were Americans, most of them very diverse, like different descents, but but Americans. And there's one thing that great in America, and I know, like many people around the world, when you tell them about America, they everybody has an opinion about the United States of America. But a good thing that people know about United States is that people often encourage each other much more than anywhere else in the world. You know, I was I was raised in Eastern Europe. And it's not a common thing that you come with a crazy idea and people tell you, hell, yeah, this is what you should do. Like, you can do it like you got it. So when I shared with my class my dream to to go to the moon, they really, really encouraging to the extent that I did not expect that. And they named the class because there is like a vote in the end of each class, they named the class moonshot just to support me. So I remember I was leaving after the first seminar, going back, back home, and I felt like the weight on my shoulders. I felt like, oh, you, me, you're so silly. You don't even deep inside, you don't believe you can win this thing to go around the moon. But these old people, they they all believe in it, so why can't you believe in it? So this was an experience that I realized that really, it's so important who is around you. Because this just gives you. I always see that it moves the wall of the room. It just expands the room. So you can you can dream bigger or achieve more when you see these great examples of people. And also it's not about what they achieve, it's about how they do their work. [00:12:55][189.9]

English Sall: [00:12:59] Eventually, Yemi adopted the name Moonshot for his accelerator. Inspired by his peers, he also applied to dearMoon, and he was selected among 1 million people to be one of the first eight civilians to fly around the moon. [00:13:16][16.4]

Yemi A.D.: [00:13:18] This was probably like the biggest shift in my awareness that I have ever went through, because when I first told my mom, you know, of course she was worried and and proud and we cried together. There was this moment of connection that we looked back at everything that we went through, all the crap, all the all the damage, all the bad stuff being, you know, growing up in Czechoslovakia, in a communist country, under the Soviet rule, a lot of bad things happen. And this one moment when when I got the seed, we kind of looked at each other as we were crying, and we understood that all of the bad things also were good for something. And I am very grateful and very humbled by this, by this potential. You know, I know I haven't flown to the moon. I haven't been, even I didn't go through any like thorough trainings yet, but just the fact that you can dream. So in such an extent and that someone from such a small and like insignificant beginnings can get this far. I feel really much better about the world and about young people growing up because they see, like, so much as possible today. [00:14:34][76.7]

English Sall: [00:14:35] Wow. I mean, it's just hugely inspiring. And I think that your story in itself is hugely inspiring. The narrative of growing up in the Czech Republic and all of the things that you have done that are both kind of in the vein of being just an artist, a social entrepreneur, and a system capitalist. So tell me a little bit more, Yemi, about, I mean, you obviously are a very creative person, a very visionary person. Tell me about how you've sort of been able to capture that creative and visionary passion and direct it more on like kind of the social sector and what you're doing now. Right. And what what sort of inspired you to go from kind of this career in the arts and creativity and now sort of focusing that on the social sector and thread that line of safety for me a little bit more. [00:15:33][57.5]

Yemi A.D.: [00:15:34] Very often people ask me about about my strategy, right. What was the one point that changed everything? And it's it's really not that it's more about equation. So my equation is always surrounded by excitement. So if something really excites me, if I like really feel happy, I, I want to follow it. And another thing is, I don't think that when you just copy someone else's success, like you see someone is doing great and you say, okay, this is the profession I want to do, this is what I want to do. You kind of disregard the path to there. So in my life, I always just went from one thing that excites me to another. And that's why I went through so many different professions. I was very kind of awkward because I was, growing up in the, you know, 80s in Czechoslovakia. It was communism. I was the only black kid in the whole city. I saw another black kid when I was 15. And my father, he unfortunately allowed this freedom when he was visiting his parents in Nigeria. And there was a revolution and the borders closed and he could never come back. So it was just me and my mom and my grandma and my great grandma, three white women that would raise me. Just recently was visiting my friend Randy, and she and her daughter gave me this new term. She said, you are a coconut if you are white on the inside and black on the outside. And I love that term because it's like being raised around white people. So being completely, you know, like raised in that way, but then being reminded from outside that you're not really, you know, really that it's important because this kind of created the foundation that the kid you look from your head outside, you don't look on the or you don't look back. It's important to understand that for you, what you experience is a baseline, and then you judge the other world from that baseline. So when I think about it, it took me a long it took me the whole life to find the path that makes sense. That feels good, you know, and that is effective for what I want to achieve. I had to start working very young, so I had to I had my first business when I was 16. And so I kind of couldn't just like decide what I want to do, but I just had to do it, you know, I had to know how to buy and sell, how to make business. And so I could never just be an artist. So which was a great advantage. I didn't think of it back then, but it was a great advantage later on because I started these different companies and that it allowed me to really expand and travel around the world and do different things. So. So I had these businesses running, but then I felt like, hey. And there was one. One of my friends. Amazing, amazing Estonian entrepreneur David Hendricks. He was the first employee of Skype. He started TransferWise. And he asked me, hey, yeah, me. So what would happen if you didn't do it? And I was like, well, if if I didn't do it, I think someone else would do it. And he says, oh, you see. And and I was like, This is such a simple question, but actually it's very profound because am I that privilege that I can think about it in this way? Like, can I do something that if I didn't do it, it would really be a loss? And I and I started to think about this and I started to kind of transition because I realized that in entertainment industry there was so much fun already. There was so entertainment. You know, like, I don't think I don't think we have lack of entertainment in this world. So I had to kind of face a real question, ask myself, like, am I being useful? But then I was thinking, hey, I'm I'm making people buy more stuff they don't need. And I don't think that being useful. So, so yeah. So that's how I transitioned. And I when I entered the space, it was both, the technology which was already there, but more in artistic way. When I transitioned, I was like full on in technology and impact space because it's the best way, right? Combination between the art and culture, technology and the impact space. Like this is a very special equation that can really move mountains. [00:19:52][258.2]

English Sall: [00:19:56] I love the question. Yeah, my friend offered to him what would happen if you didn't do it as a system catalyst. Find something that excites you and that you are uniquely positioned to do. For Yemi, it is supporting emerging entrepreneurs and collaborating to accelerate impact. You have worked with a lot of institutions. You've worked a lot across various sectors. What is some advice that you would have for System Catalyst in wanting to bring people together and wanting to work with institutions, and wanting to collaborate in wanting to get funding for their ideas. What's just some some advice that you can share with us based on your experience of, of kind of how to just be patient and sort of continue that work and have that spark in that passion. [00:20:49][53.4]

Yemi A.D.: [00:20:51] Interesting. If there was one thing that I would suggest or recommend for other system Catalyst to do so, they could bring people together and, you know, have a community to to work with because this is a work that it would be both absurd and very ignorant if one wanted to bring upon any change on their own. You know, because we are biased creatures, and if we don't share, if we don't really use the collective direction, or let's say inclusive co-design, we are not doing good work. So I think that this number one, I think it's important for those system capitalists to first recognize their motivation in the time of social media and in a time of cancel culture, and in a time of all these different new terms, it's really important to spend some time alone, digitally detox and really ask yourself the hard questions of why are you doing it? Because if your motivation is external, it's not going to last. And you going to maybe, maybe it's still worth it. You're going to do some good job, even some good work. You're going to learn some things that are meet amazing people. But in the end you're going to end up elsewhere. But it's okay because it could just be a transition moment for you. It doesn't have to be the destination, but still, it's very healthy to understand your motivation. I remember I give you one example. I had a one moment in my life that was kind of hard. Something traumatic happened and I needed to do this kind of reset. So I what I did is I decided that I'm gonna I'm going to stay off for two years. So in my country, I used to have a TV show and I'm, I go to different like, events and I do a lot of interviews and book conference, so on. So, so it is like a thing if you decide to withdraw from a public I and I and I did it and it was very interesting. It was a beautiful, cleansing process and it was one of the most valuable ones. It changed a lot of decisions that I've done. It changed the trajectory of my life. And and it was very healing. And also the people who are around me have changed. Some people left and different people came into the circle. So I recommend it. And one of the reason and I this is kind of also kind of intimate, but it's useful only if it's authentic. I will doubting myself. Also in like, why do I do this in space? Because is it because I like the way it looks because I was a performer. So I also always was like learned how to perform. So then if you are on the stage and you're receiving an award for something, or if you are on the social media and you are being, you know, applauded for for something, you kind of are still the actor in all of it. You are in the middle of it and you will have people admiring what you do. But then is the motivation, like sometimes it doesn't matter, because as long as you're doing good work, it's good enough. But I want it to go like one step deeper and see how well I like doing this work without always. And that was like a just self-reflective process. The second thing I would say I would recommend is choose the right partner. I think that both on your own team and on the team that sits across you, it's really important who you work with. And sometimes I was very naive and I, I wanted to change things that I was not supposed to change, you know, like this, like a messiah complains that you want to change people or you want to change the things that are done. But you know what happens when this will be maybe a little harsh, but when you have a bowl of rotten apples, you know, you for the for the fresh apple, it's gonna rub, you know? So, so you have to first protect yourself and work with people. That excites this excites you. You know that that you know they have integrity. You know that they will see things through. You know that they also like you for for you what you bring to the table. And it's not just a transactional relationship. So choose the partner wisely and have integrate integrity not just with the world, but with yourself. And you do that. And I think the third thing, and I spoke about this already a lot, is just make it exciting. But when you do it, make it exciting, not just for yourself, make it exciting for the people and make things exciting for the people you work with. For your community. It means to learn something much more than just foreign language. So I speak Czech, a little bit Slovakian. I can understand some Polish. I learned German for a little bit. I learned French for a little bit. I can understand some things, but not really speak it. But. But when you learn languages, you realize that every new language has a whole different personality. The way people call things, it changes who they are, how weird, how they were raised. So if you don't know another language, it's kind of hard to get this what I'm trying to explain. But there is a different type of languages which has nothing to do with foreign countries, and it's the languages of our personalities. Whether you are an introvert, whether you are an extrovert, whether you are an analytical, analytical mind, when you are conceptual mind, you know, like there are people who like to start in the deep and go really deep. And that's how their brain is wired and they can get best out of it. But then there are people who really wants to just like one, two, three, and then they need freedom. They need to step back and have freedom to think on their own. And if you don't understand this and you want to lead a community and you explaining yourself to people and or building structure the way you understand it, I don't think you are like doing well enough, because if you see people are not excited and you blame them for it, I'm like, no, like like it can be them. Even things that are that are sad, even things that are hard. You know, we don't have to bring toxicity into work that's already so hard. And I think people deserve to be excited to wake up in the morning. [00:27:03][372.6]

English Sall: [00:27:04] That's beautiful. So I think that what I heard is, number one, it's really about the authenticity. It's really about how you show up. It's about how you show up for yourself, and it's about how you show up for the people around you and doing what you need to do as a person to heal, to be your authentic self, to show up in a way that that really is truthful to your motivations and your intent on what you're bringing to the world. I think number two is partnership. It's finding the right partner and so much of that. Right. The first thing kind of helps you get and achieve. The second thing, if you're showing up authentically, then that partnership will become more organic and you'll know you'll it'll be clear about who that right partner is and who the right people are to surround you with. [00:27:54][50.5]

Yemi A.D.: [00:27:55] Absolutely. [00:27:55][0.0]

English Sall: [00:27:56] And the third thing I think that you spoke about just so eloquently is, is it has to be fun. It has to be enjoyable. It has to be delightful. Building community and being in community with others has to start from a place of of joy, even if the work itself is hard, even if the issue itself is. Add working to better a system. It has to be a reason that people want to keep going, right? And a lot of that is being in the right community. And if you're helping try and change that system, or if you're helping try and lead that community doing it in a way that really honors everyone else that's showing up at the table and the languages that they speak, and the intention that they have and the personality that they bring to it. Is that is that a fair? Is that a fair summarization? [00:28:46][50.3]

Yemi A.D.: [00:28:47] You did a great, amazing job because they were mumbling for so long, and you were able to really summarize precisely very well. I would say I would add one more thing, and that is that today we use a lot the word authenticity, and it doesn't mean the same for everyone. So that's why when I pointed out the first thing I'm like, do you know what your real motivation is? Like the new look inside really, really well, you know, like not in a group of people, but really just for yourself because sometimes people use I'll use the word authenticity just to be lazy because they are like, oh, this is my authentic self, you know? But they don't really realize this. It's just another layer of compensation or, or who they became through different events. So it's simply when, when you focus on the motivation. [00:29:37][49.2]

English Sall: [00:29:38] Well, yeah, I mean this has been so wonderful. I'll, I'll sort of leave us the final question here. Is there any final message that you want to leave our our listeners with? You have just given so much wisdom, and I appreciate you talking about your various adventures of the moonshot platform, the work that you've done in the entertainment space. And then, of course, you know, just your adventure going to the moon. We're so excited to be able to follow along with you on all of that. But any anything else, any sort of final words of wisdom? [00:30:07][29.5]

Yemi A.D.: [00:30:08] Well, thank you so much for having me. I think I just have an invitation. I think it's important for the people who are listening to know that moonshot platform is there for them. It's not a closed community, and it doesn't matter whether you are 15 or 55, even though the the awards are we are giving the awards to the younger people, but then we are looking for mentors. It's just the just the community. So if you go to moonshotplatform.org, you can sign up into the community and just be with us through this, movement for through this movement, when we want to bring young people into spaces where they can contribute and co-design and shape the future that they will inherit. [00:30:58][50.0]

English Sall: [00:30:59] Amazing. And we will make sure to put all of the relevant links to everything that you've talked about in our podcast notes and our show notes as well. So thank you so much, Yemi. [00:31:09][9.9]

Yemi A.D.: [00:31:10] Thank you. English. It was great. [00:31:12][1.5]

English Sall: [00:31:23] That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalysts so you don't miss out on a new episode. Also, do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review. Thank you all so much for joining us, and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at human Group media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission the Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Global Leadership Network, Echoing green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Boldly Go Philanthropy, Synergos, Forward Global, Nexus and New Profit. If you are interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit Systemcatalyst.com. [00:31:23][0.0]

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